Talking to Your Financial Adviser about ETFs? Some Questions to Consider

    Recently a family member came to me asking for some advice about the recommendations made by their financial adviser, and he wanted to know for the next time to talks to the adviser. The adviser was recommending some specific Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) to allocate some money into.

    The main questions that I was asked were:
1) Whether or not ETFs are a good idea.
2) Whether the fees for the ETFs and the advisers on top of that were worth it.
3) Should he just invest in them directly and skip the advisers commission on top of it.
4) What are some good questions to ask the adviser.

I won't go into what the specific ETFs were, as that is more of an asset allocation decision based on the person portfolio.

Recent Buy: Last Buys of March

    Before and after I went away on vacation I deployed a fair sum of capital that become available to me. Having already posted my recent buys that month of AQN and RY, there is still the additional shares of Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), BCE inc (BCE) and Pizza Pizza (PZA) to my portfolio that month. It was a very busy month of portfolio building, which is reflected quite clearly in my last Portfolio Update, with a 103% increase in value!
    Leading up to these buys required quite a bit of time going over each companies available financial information, news releases and comparing the cost and benefits of each relative to each other. As well as comparing the portfolio weighting of each of the companies that were on my watchlist, as well as the impact of adding different amounts of each would have on my overall sector weightings as well.

March 2015: Income & Expenses

    March was a great month for me, although not quite as much in the ways of saving money. Had an awesome time during my trip to the Dominican Republic, soaking up the sun, booze and eating the food! As such, I had some extra one time costs of buying new ear-buds for the flight to help block out the planes sound, a shirt for the wedding ceremony as well as the cost/cash of converting Canadian dollars to American and spending it there on airport taxes, excursions and some small souvenirs. All in all, didn't spend that much more than usual and even offset some of my usual costs in fewer subway tokens used and buying groceries and lunches when at work.

Portfolio Update: April 6th

    I have been making quite a few purchases of late and realized that its been quite some time since I last posted a portfolio update post, the last one being at the end of January, woops! So here is the status of my portfolio as of April 6th. 

March 2015 Dividend Update!

    Every third month of a year is a pretty quiet month in terms of dividend income for me. But quiet and consistency from my month payers and Suncor are always appreciated, with their stable income! The month was also a bit quieter on the writing side as I was away for a week on vacation! Had a blast and soaked up quite a bit of sun with some much needed R&R! Since getting back I have been enjoying catching up with the news, markets and blogs; love having lots of new reading material!